LAST DAY OF AUGUST

Like the first time 

it weightlessly 

tugs on your mind 

that perhaps you've been 

hunched at one 

task for too long, 

the last day 

of August comes 

nosing around

to quicken the pulse 

of this shaggy, 

wistful midlife. 

Like a gentle, loving prod 

from a cool, 

wet muzzle 

it provokes 

a quick shiver—that first 

twinge of September, 

and a portent, 

without any basis 

in memory, 

that Death, 

in her glory, is certain 

to return here—

not as the heiress 

of this mild, 

mangy beauty,

but rather, once again, 

its hospitable 

mother.

GOLDBRICK

That blindspot 

on your retina; 

those pimples 

you deplore;

that stiffness in your hip 

which you stoically 

ignore—it's like: 

long ago, 

all at once, 

and for a 

limited time only, 

your life 

was a sweepstakes—a grand prize 

you were awarded.

After all the glamour 

and the wonderment 

of which, 

you realized,

to your horror, you'd be

totally stuck 

toiling, day 

after day after 

day, 

just for the means

to afford it.

BEST SELLER

By now, even if 

all you recorded 

was the tally 

of times 

you woke up in the morning 

and managed 

to heave your full

weight to the floor

without any 

insubordination—

or really

even questioning it—

you'd already 

have written 

a towering epic 

more impressive in scope 

and fidelity 

than Homer's, 

more fantastic

and lofty and bizarre

than Cervantes', 

and certainly 

several dozen, 

if not hundreds 

of pages longer 

than the number of days 

even Jesus

could afford.

BENEDICTION

Our days are infused 

with so much 

that's righteous

it'd ruin our ability 

to continue 

if we noticed. 

Doesn't matter 

who you've hurt

or how 

many times now—

morning birds will 

sing to you;

when you're driving 

through the night 

to escape from the truth, 

the impossible soup 

of atoms in the air 

will part 

to let you through 

and salute; 

and just when you think 

you are finally living 

on the last line 

of a prayer 

at the tail-end of time, 

tomorrow arrives 

without help, 

on a dime—

and there's nothing 

you can do.

RANDOM RULES

What if, 

in the beginning,

that first word 

which spoke itself

was deaf?

And the face 

that moved out across 

the surface of the ocean

was blind 

as a stone 

and couldn't feel 

the motion? 

After all, the trick 

with pure light 

is that it cannot 

be highlighted; 

it can ignite

or illuminate, 

but can never itself 

be lit. 

What if you live

in a universe 

like that—

where a thought 

(even the first

best thought 

which ever existed) 

could never 

be caught

and would have 

no idea, even if 

it could be, what 

it was 

on about?

EXIGENCY

Eventually, 

it must be alright 

to stop 

the irritable reaching, and just 

enjoy the night; 

to soak a while in Epsom 

and put balm 

on all your blisters, 

then tan 

for far too long

in front of the television. 

A few scented candles 

might 

be appropriate, 

and a little soft music 

to drown out the sound 

of all the innovations 

you dimly know 

you should be making, 

even as you feel 

the internal untying 

of thousands 

of taught, soaking strands 

of gray rope.

You think: 

who am I to reach 

for more 

than I can hold? 

God knows—

even Bach, 

despite all his 

brilliant leaping, 

sooner or later 

would always 

fall back

on the same old

dozen notes.

COMPASSION

In some ways, it isn't 

a very big thing; 

it's more like 

the faceted tip 

of a jewel—

that minuscule, 

razor sharp 

vanishing point 

where Kinship 

meets up with 

and annihilates 

the Individual.

It's a definite, 

and a desperate, 

and a weaponized 

kind of knowing—

like the way 

each blade of rain 

knows the river 

where it came from—

or a pair of stainless 

scissors knows 

the susceptiveness 

of paper—

or a small

desperate mammal,

who has built 

its mock nest 

under the hood 

of your Ford 

in the winter,

instinctively knows 

that it needs 

much more help

than it possibly knows 

how to ask for. 

DIE-HARDISM

How simple 

are the mandates

obeyed by ocean waves? 

And yet, how high 

are the barricades 

all of us face 

as we try in our vain way 

to over-complicate 

their movements? 

The manic morning 

undulations and great sighs 

of afternoon; 

the silent senescence, 

anointed 

by the moonlight 

and the overnight redoubling 

of our decision 

not to bend. 

So this, then, will be left 

as our crest 

and our pinnacle: 

our refusal to flow 

or relinquish 

our own edges, 

to register the absence 

and tremendous largess 

of all of the others 

who have broken 

on that silent shore, 

inexorably, before us 

with our unfathomably 

vast unwillingness 

to depend. 

 

SATORI

You'd think 

it'd take 

an acid trip, 

or a beatific vision 

on day six 

of a fast, 

but more often, 

you're doing dishes, 

or stuck in traffic 

when you notice: 

a soul 

must exist

in the smallest 

of objects.

Heaven 

may swim 

with the cyanide 

in an apple seed; 

god 

could be stuck

in a hydrogen atom 

like Daedalus 

condemned to roam lost

in his labyrinth.

The proof 

is in how you 

can't ever truly 

map all the ins

to the outs 

of anything—

not without 

pinning and 

killing it, that is. 

Therefore (it practically 

behooves you 

to conclude)

nothing that's living

is ever finished 

meaning.

 

PITH

Harsh, 

acrid proof

that the last 

man standing 

is not the most 

genuine, but 

the one 

who spouts a plan 

comes oozing 

(with coaxing) 

like the pale,

sour juice 

from the pulpy insides

of a lopsided lemon: 

the difference 

between it 

and a cool glass 

of lemonade 

is roughly equivalent 

to the difference between 

the very 

best idea 

and the best idea 

anyone 

who's trapped 

in that moment 

is likely 

to have.  

ADVANCE PREPARATION

Right about now 

might be a good time 

to practice

picturing some truly

ponderous objects—

red giant 

stars and their requisite 

planets, for instance; 

or maybe the jagged 

enormity of Everest 

and majestic jade sprawl 

of a distant 

Mount St. Helens; 

or perhaps, the deluxe

Frigidaire side-

by-side refrigerator 

humming reliably 

away in the corner 

of your shoebox

apartment on the 

29th floor—because 

without a little effort  

and advance preparation, 

when it counts most, 

it may prove too 

difficult to imagine 

that, in order for everything 

to exist as it is, 

all of it 

first must get 

lifted 

into place.

IMAGINE THAT

After all that

hard work 

keeping straight 

on the path, 

imagine 

your relief 

when you're 

finally dead—and, 

just as you suspected, 

you wind up 

in heaven. 

Which of course 

is a place of endless 

harmony and order 

to which no one 

in perpetuity can 

possibly object—

where there's 

no such word 

as outrageous,

and there's 

no such concepts

as crisis 

or danger—

so you 

never again 

need to pretend 

to be

tiresome things,

such as 

brave 

or pragmatic.

BY ANALOGY

If our feelings were the rocks 

which used to litter 

ancient cliffs, 

and our needs

were the bellies

of enormous pack animals, 

than the very first

decent snatch 

of poetry on earth 

was a blunt, bulky 

hand ax, chiseled gracelessly 

from flint.

More contemporary examples 

of the art, such 

as this

may come across 

like the polished 

obsidian tip

of an arrow 

aimed straight at some

more modern creature, 

but either way, 

the outcome 

is the same: 

an uncouth attack,

made in desperation

on its heart—

which, now,

as back then, is a sack 

filled with rocks.

ENTANGLEMENT

This one's addressed 

just to you, 

lukewarm reader,

even though we 

seldom understand 

one another—

let this poem stand 

as a prayer's 

humble opposite:

no hyperbolic paean 

to what's hopeless-

ly beyond us;

just a few mealy words 

to keep you screwed 

to the earth—

its fermented treasure 

troves of dirt, 

under-ripe 

apple groves 

and honey bee 

stingers. 

May its aim curve 

away from complexities 

like god, 

and instead, curl in tight 

toward a charm 

that can't be lost,

toward all of those 

guiltless and selfsame 

and clean

quarks and 

electrons, which spin 

and invent us.

CONFINES

Would it be somehow more 

or less disconcerting 

to see

that there is no 

one reality 

which undergirds the scene? 

Take, for instance, the dimly lit room 

where once, we 

sat all night, arguing—

slinging gold rings, 

tacking up tents, and drawing with chalk

down the center of the thing.

How painfully small 

it seemed to me then; 

how crammed 

with stale baggage and flooded 

with shame. 

Then again, there could have been 

much more space around us

than we realized; 

that stifling room's true size

might just have been infinite—

although then, one must imagine, 

so too would've been 

the elephant.

KILLING TIME ON THE WEST SIDE OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Slow hawk, your cool

but deliberate 

wheeling 

through edgeless, 

haint blue

lap pools of sky—

untroubled

by the faint clangs 

of dissonant music 

flung up 

from our jagged, hectic 

neighborhoods below—

by and by, strikes me 

as the proximate 

reason 

why nobody 

misses a thing  

while they're dancing.

CONTEMPLATION STAGE

Sometimes, it's like 

the endgame 

has already passed, 

yet we can't shake the feeling 

that time 

is of the essence. 

In lieu of more self-absorbed, 

we have settled for 

less attentive, 

and the one thing 

we must try to keep 

is our pride 

in the things that 

feel expensive 

after our losses. 

Long hours pass 

in which we do not care 

in praise of which heuristic we sing,

or if we just sit

with our legs crossed 

in peaceable halls, 

determined 

as cowboys 

to subdue 

our own thoughts.

MATINS

Take your time, sun,

but please arrive

when you might

to baptize the dewdrops 

and stifle 

our yawning.

Nearest star of heaven, 

don't neglect us—

bend down

flutter the skirts 

of your luminescent dress,

and scatter all the light 

we could hope to know 

around;

lend us half an ounce 

of your brilliance 

and your insight

to turn our sadness into 

merely sighing 

and a long, dark night 

into merely 

our lives.

OBLIQUE STRATEGY

For the space 

of one of those very 

scant flashes 

which manages, somehow, 

to inspire

as it terrifies, 

I can almost understand—

that I just might love 

missing you 

the same way

these huge, ancient 

poplars love lightning: 

ungraciously,

and sidelong—and all

of the time.

A BREAK IN THE WEATHER

Actually, it's almost 

unbelievable 

how reliably 

fissures of lightning 

and great groans 

of thunder 

will give way, 

inexorably, to the kindest 

light of summer—

how that fresh, 

honest radiance 

will pour out all over, 

touching and

untroubling every 

corner of the world,

yet always seeking 

nothing—

like a foolish promise 

newly spoken, 

not yet stale 

refused, or broken;

or a sentence 

begun in such 

exuberant earnest 

but still as-yet

unfinished, 

and so still 

so refreshingly 

devoid of any 

meaning, sense, 

or substance.

THE THIRD COMING

If Yeats 

could've seen the mad 

21st century, 

he'd say: things don't 

fall apart; they 

hang together ruthlessly.

Ritual has raged its way 

from a safe space

to a battleground, 

wherein 

putrefactive words 

on a sacrificial page 

are left out, each day, 

near the entrance 

to a cave

as blood-dimmed charity 

for this fierce, 

infernal dragon:

a serpent 

bred to torment 

those poor children 

who refuse to praise 

coherence with so-called 

"passionate intensity,"

and whose name, 

legend has it, 

used to be Duty, 

but is now known

in our stories as 

Logical Consistency. 

FEAR OF INTIMACY

After a certain point, 

it might really start  

to bother you 

how one damn thing, 

insufferably, converges 

on another—

how every faultless cloud 

drifting silent 

on the horizon 

inevitably crashes into 

and then merges 

with a partner, 

or how predictably 

the pale somber mood

of the evening 

comes bleeding 

like a bruise into 

carefree afternoon. 

There are those of us 

who feel choked 

when there's so little room 

for doubt; those of us 

who were born 

to be lonely  

find the constant, inevitable 

union

of what's separate 

to be less 

a small infusion of closeness 

and of hope 

and more 

of a slow 

drip of poison.

KEEP PRACTICING

Down goes the soft pedal 

on your baby-

grand piano, 

smearing those 

artless and hurried 

arpeggios—while, 

in the background, 

outside the practice 

room window, 

floats the revenant 

of the failure 

that haunts you the most

who bids a good

morning to your 

ritualized devotion 

and prays (on your behalf) 

that death 

and transfiguration 

may be differentiated 

by only two 

or three notes.